What kind of organisation do we want?

Below is a copy from our recent e-mail conversations, illustrating the some of the pro and con arguments in this case. My comments will be formatted in bold. Please do not pay attention to my previous vote on the subject, as it was not formatted correctly. I will try do better with this one. Mikael

James: I took a ride today with a taxi driver called Khaled. He’s from the north-east of Syria and as a member of the minority Kurdish community he has no identity papers. That means no ability to rent or buy a house, have a passport or even loan the taxi that he drives. It is registered by a ‘friend’ who he has to pay a 15% commission to. Everyone in his family and wider community are looking for a better life, for some sort of opportunity. His cousin, Ahmad, raised 10,000 dollars over 15 years to bribe a middleman to get him to Germany. Within hours of landing in Berlin he was deported and sent back to Syria. On arrival he was arrested and put in prison for six months.

We are the lucky ones. We all know that for the world to be a much fairer place, we need a democratically elected world parliament. That's not a website, an online forum, or a portal where we click stars to say how much we like what each other say. It's a huge undertaking and in all probability will require another world war before it comes about.

A democratically elected world parliament is one model of future world democracy, not the only one. For example, I believe that a provisional world parliament consisting of for example 5000 randomly selected people from all over the world could have many advantages

1. It would be much more representative, also including poor people and analfabets, not only a selection of the rich and famous with high personal ambitions(often with narcissistic and psychopatic personality traits) from each countries upper class. 2. It could circumvent the problem of arranging fair elections in dictatorship dominated countries like China.

There is not just one form of democracy, there are many forms of democracy. There can also be different types of democractic systems fitting better for different cultures. One of my ideas with globaldemo.org was to spread information and create a creative debate about this, with space for each type of democracy to present itself, become evaluated and debated, with the final aim to construct several different proposals for a world constitution, that should be amended in a global referendum or other democratic process. This is definetely not an easy task, and far beyond my capacity. I believe we need the input and creativity from thousands of people to do this in an optimal way. One of the main reasons for having so many different world democracy organisations is that they each have separate, and slightly different views on how world democracy should be constructed. In order to create a real movement, there has to be room for every diffrent viewpoint, while still keeping the common goal, a just world, governed by the people as the prime and common denominator.

I want to know what we can do to make this global democracy happen. The first thing we need, is somewhere where like-minded people can find us. We need to know who we are. The second thing we need to do is start mobilising money and campaigns to spread the message.

We haven’t even got to stage one yet.

There are lots of organisations involved in global democracy efforts. However, we need a hub where the tens of thousands of people who read Monbiot’s or Falk’s work and think, “yeah, that’s an interesting idea”, can go and find out more, meet others and organise in the real world. Even if a fraction of them get involved we have the beginnings of a movement worthy of the name.

Is anybody else interested in trying to achieve this?

What we have almost created with the current globaldemo.org website is almost there. I’m working on a serious improvement to the ‘profiles’ side of the site and the email notifications. But, I don’t see there being any point in working on it unless we’re agreed on what we want to do.

Ken has done all the legal work to establish the most democratic organisation around. That doesn’t mean everyone votes on everything all the time. That is a form of direct democracy, and while I think it’s great in some circumstances, it’s not what I’m working for. I think that representative democracy is the best way to organise the world and indeed the best way to organise ourselves. That’s why I support Rufo’s idea of a web ‘chair’ - a representative post.

What is it that you guys want? A website where people make ‘proposals’? For what? By who? What is a proposal anyway? It doesn’t mean anything if it’s made “in the air”. Who do you represent? Establish the organisation (if you can be bothered) and then make the proposals within them. Then at least your proposals represent something. That’s exactly the functionality we built into globaldemo.org. Anyone can create a group and make all the proposals you like. You can even follow the following rules from unitedindividuals (if you like):

That functionality is not yet built in and organized, in my opinion

The urgent will be voted upon within one week, the normal ones within one month and the permanent proposals permanently until they lose support and have a rating < 50% for one month. You rate and comment all proposals. Proposals receiving a support with >50 % will become polls, and finally decided upon.

What if I don’t have the time to vote? And who agreed to this arbitrary method of deciding on these nebulous ‘proposals’ anyway? 99.9% of people in democratic countries vote once in every three or four years, if that. The point is not about voting frequently (though that can make institutions more democratic), it’s about accountability. It’s about sovereignty with the people. As Monbiot says, it’s about being able to withdraw your consent to whoever is ruling over you.

Please read about delegated voting in my book Democracy 2,1, which you can locate on http://globaldemo.org/library/888 The problem with conventional democracy is that it blocks people from direct influence in politics most of the time, which leads to a decline in political interest, and an “elected dictatorship” With delegated voting, that I hope will be implemented in the near future on our site, members can decdide for themselves when to particpate directly, or leave the vote to a representative. Until then, I propose we will have a standardized procedure for voting within the site buy our members, combined with the input from a dedicated board.

We’re trying to capture the power of those that rule the world and put it to the service of those that live there. This is a massive task. Lots of people think I’m nuts for getting involved in ‘global democracy’ campaigning. I’m sure you all get the same treatment. But I still think it’s the most valid cause around and I have poured a huge amount of effort (as you all have) into developing this website and I’m not about to throw it away.

I also, just like you did spend lots of time and money into launching this project, and do not want to through it away. I do not want to rule the world, I want the world to be run by its inhabitants.

So where do we go from here?

I would like to see a website before the end of 2008 that brings all those who care for global democracy together in one place. As Rob says, there needs to be someone/something responsible and accountable that oversees its content and operation. That’s the CGD that Ken has gone to great lengths to establish.

What I do not want is a website which is another tdge.org/WPE. There is a valid place for the WPE and I’m looking forward to contributing to pushing that along. However, if this was always the vision for this website then I feel I have been greatly misled.

I want to create an organisation for global democracy, that is governed by direct internet voting according to the principles of WPE, where members can have equal rights and possibilities, also the ones who cannot afford to travel to conferences and particpate in board meetings. Besides spreading information about the need for global democracy, it would also arrange campaignes, publish books, and make joint statesments and campaigns. When starting to administer money, the amount of possible conflicts will surely multipy, and the way to resolve theese conflicts will be through debating, refining proposals and voting. I want the organisation to be totally transparent, minimize hierarchic positions, and have as little top-down, or dictatorship tendencies as possible.

I never had the impression this website was going to be an experiment in small-group ‘direct democracy’. I’d like to turn it into a resource that gets people in ‘off the street’ and connected to others around them who want to get active too. Then we can start the real work of getting my taxi driver Khaled a better life. Is that a shared goal?

If you only want to go for a conventional organisations, with a board and elected representatives proposing the Falk and Strauss model. I suggest you start your Falk-Strauss website, and call it something like the the Gobal Democracy Campaign, and I will continue with the Globaldemo project. Globaldemo has a double meaning referring to the demoex.net project, which is the first succesful example of direct internet democracy with delegated voting in a real political setting in the world, and I would like to keep this connection. I am willing to give you some time until the launch of your Falk-Strauss site, if that is your wish, to spread out your new website name, so things do not get to confused. After that I want to use the globaldemo.org name for a site that is governed by direct democratic principles. If you also want to work for an orgaqnisation governed by direct e-democracy, I suggest you send me the database and the files from the server, and i will upload them on a seprate account on www.blurstorm.com, where both you, me, james and Bruce will have access. Bruce also knows about Drupal, and I trust him as a collaborator and dedicated member. My goal is not to give Khaled a better future, it is to help him create a better future for himself and his fellow men.